January 19, 2017

∴ How Appropriate

Today’s mail brought the usual raft of junk mail, forwards for my mom, and one item I found particularly timely on this final day of the Obama administration: a solicitation for donation from the American Civil Liberties Union.

I’ve been an on-and-off supporter of the ACLU for a long while. Perhaps the first meaningful thing I did the day after Donald Trump was elected president of the United States was make another donation to support the fight I knew would come. It begins tomorrow.

I’ll likely set a monthly donation online, then turn my attention back to writing about the fraud committed upon those identifying as “deplorable” and the reality of today’s GOP, the indifference or ignorance of the “front row” boys and girls who gain admission to the club, unaware, by virtue of their race, berating my Congressmen if they accept Trumpism, and the usual collection of trivia, irrelevance, and impermanence found here.

I’m less concerned with what this says about me than what it says about those who’d scoff. I doubt most know what the ACLU stands for. To quote (aclu.org):

For almost 100 years, the ACLU has worked to defend and preserve the individual rights and liberties guaranteed by the Constitution and laws of the United States.

More specifically those rights enumerated in the Bill of Rights, the first ten amendments to the Constitution of the United States.

Some hold the Bible in holy regard. My “bible” is this document and its amendments.

The defense of these rights here at home has been championed by few with greater fervor than the ACLU. The Southern Poverty Law Center, perhaps. The Electronic Frontier Foundation, in latter days.

As this fucker ascends to the highest office in our land, a fraud, conman, shyster, and betrayer of trust for all of his gilded life there is no greater cause than the protection of the least capable, the most needy, those who stand to lose the most among us. I stand as a front row white man who never had a clue how privileged he was until I watched young black men beaten and killed, unarmed in our streets, and read, and realized, and became as no small number of people of color would call, “WOKE.”

I’ll contribute, I’ll write, I will publish until not one person on the other side of these issues can stand to follow, friend, or read me. And I’ll be a proud, card-carrying member of the ACLU, because their cause begins with AMERICAN. Their cause is mine.